‘Home’ is Where the Heart is

This paper explores female gender identity and informs belonging and place from a narrative auto ethnographic position. Using family artefacts I explore my migrant history, my community, and my individual story. The produced responses are a key navigational strategy to re-chart my life. This investigation is located in my experience of being a British involuntary child migrant. My identity formation was fractured when immigration disrupted my expectation for continuity and I lived contrapuntally with a foot in both the pre-emigration and post-immigration worlds. I investigate and map gendered identity and I gain insight and understanding of my own position and reform at the same time notions of ‘home’. I reflect on how I have negotiated or broken the internalised code a culture supplies concerning how life should be experienced. Meaning and a sense of belonging are found in whatever place within or outside of Australia that I inhabit. Telling stories through the creation of art works generates a deeper understanding of belonging and raises important issues that have significance for all Australians. This country is comprised of Indigenous nations, the overlay of a white settler colony and migrants from many countries. My story becomes a narrative with a wider audience – one relevant to Australian identity. If a culture fails to tell stories it can face becoming a monolithic ‘one size fits all’ nation.